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i played all through high school, but just sort of stopped one day. Ive got my first guitar which is just a cheap Ibanez Stagestar, but i cant ever get rid of it cuz its my first guitar and i played all the gigs i ever did on it. It needs a bit of servicing after hibernating for over 6 years but yea lol.

i also recently bought an Epiphone Les Paul Studio. Its only a cheap one but I always wanted a Les Paul as Jimmy Page was and is my fav guitarist. I'll post some pics up when i get a chance.

for now its sore finger tips and lots of practice ahead.

I love how much denial i have, i thought i could jump back on and bust out the solos i used to do with my eyes closed. What used to seem slow seems bullshit fast now LOL

I know how you feel mate, I put it down for a few years when I started listening to rap/hip hop and my parents were devastated. Once I got past the whole rap phase I picked it up again and never looked back.

If you are looking for something cool to cut your teeth on, 'Since I've been loving you' by Zep is a fantastic way to re-introduce yourself to scales and modes etc. My warm up is to play every note between the first and 7th frets then back again, concentrate on clarity rather than speed. Once it becomes comfortable, try putting some musicality into it i.e. think of a song in your head and hit the notes to the beat//use string skipping etc.

I still can't shred a solo as fast as I would like but I am having informal lessons with a guy near my house that is a studio guitarist & his playing ability is out of this world.

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lol i stopped cuz of hip hop as well in a way. People at school thought i was weird cuz id play Stairway to Heaven exactly like Jimmy Page, id smash out Metallica, and at lunch id have Wu Tang blazing in my walkman LOL

i just learned Sultans of Swing again, Mark Knopfler is my other fav guitarist, i gto the whole song sussed axcept for the fast bit in the second solo.

Its all coming back to me slowly. I played for so many years, but i never really learned scales, i thought it was a waste of time, id rather play guitar solos and learn songs by listening to them. I had lessons in high school and studied music all through high school. I never learned how to read music, never interested me, i dunno how i passed music without being able to read music LOL

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yea i dropped the stage star off to get serviced and set up today. Get neck shimmed and adjusted, frets polished, re string and set harmonics, new nut made from bone, just a bit of tlc. Might consider wacking in a new humbucker but we'll see how we go after the set up, cant wait!

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got the stagestar back today its sooooooo much better than before. all it needs now is some grover machine heads and a new pick up.

the dude adjusted the neck, reset the action properly so the strings match the curve of the finger board, and replaced the string trees with new roller type ones cuz the strings were catching on the old ones.

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Anyway, yeah I noticed a few differences between the '88 Jap Strat and my current USA one:

Neck is more solid and has a better finish on newer one

Bridge is better quality

Pots are slightly better quality

Pickups are way better

Incidentally on my old one it had single coils (whereas my USA one has a humbucker, being a fat strat). I was originally going to get a luthier to bore out space for humbuckers and I had purchased some Seymour Duncans, but in the end I sold everything for a decent price because I got the fat strat for a bargain!